Hard as Wood

Aside from the little front door glass mishap, I've been making some pretty good progress on the porch. Jim is off on his Speed Week adventure, so I've been on my own.

Last night I worked on the porch posts. If you recall, they had some pretty nasty rot on the bottom. I chopped off the bottom 1 1/2 inches to reveal, for the most part, fairly good wood. Here's the chopped off bits:



Niiiiiice. The sawing process was a bit of a fiasco, if you can imagine me trying to maneuver 93.5" 6x6 beams around in my basement by myself. (the basement, by the way, is more of what I'd call a "cellar" and is obstructed by chimneys, structural posts, and pipes and overcrowded with woodworking equipment and clothes washer spare parts) The first post I cut was not such a good job, but as with most things in this renovation project, the more I did it, the better I got at it.

Then today, I went at them with the Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer, or CPES from the Rot Doctor. This stuff is supposed to "restore strength to rotten wood while helping to resist further rot in the remaining good wood"

I've brushed that epoxy mix on...



And now I wait 1 - 3 days until I apply the epoxy filler, which I probably won't get to until Sunday.

I've also been working on the balusters. I had started out priming some with aerosol cans of primer. That didn't go very far - I think I got 18 done with 4 cans. So when I went to Homer to get more, I decided to just buy a paint sprayer. Nothing too fancy, but with the amount of woodwork that needs to be done on this porch, it will easily pay for itself versus the ridiculous amount of aerosol cans I'd need at $5 each. And I can use it for priming AND top coats.

While my set up wasn't the best, once I got used to it, the sprayer worked pretty well. And I finished priming all the remaining balusters in good time:





And, lastly (though I actually did this first), I trimmed up the deck boards. They're not trimmed to their final length, but I wanted to be able get on and off the porch without weird contortions or worrying about stepping on unsupported, poorly cantilevered boards. Plus, I think the mailman and the UPS guy are thanking me for it...